


California Dreaming

by Cinaed



Category: CSI: Las Vegas
Genre: Cities, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-01
Updated: 2006-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 14:47:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinaed/pseuds/Cinaed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wendy hadn't been joking about starting every day with a group hug in San Francisco. Greg knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	California Dreaming

There are many things that Wendy misses about San Francisco. She misses the easy familiarity of the crime lab there, the way she’d known everyone on the dayshift and swing shift and graveyard shift by name. She misses the food, because oftentimes Las Vegas meals seem overdone and garish compared to the more subtle cuisine of San Francisco. She even misses the piercing cry of the seagulls, despite the fact that she used to wince every time she heard one shrieking, because it is something she never hears in Las Vegas, this landlocked city of sin. Most of all, though, and she doesn’t quite understand it herself, Wendy misses the air and how its salty thickness almost burned her throat every time she took a breath. 

Wendy’s earned many an odd look at that remark, and one or two (like David) have even shaken their head and told her that San Francisco obviously made her a little touched in the head. 

Greg knows though. That first week, after she’d taken a long drag of a cigarette (sometimes she could almost convince herself that the bitterness of ashes was the same as the bitterness of salt) and told him that she missed San Francisco, she had seen the knowledge and recognition in his eyes. 

Maybe that’s why they’ve become friends, because they both miss the same place. They talk about their time spent in San Francisco, their favorite restaurants, bars, parks, what they miss most about the city and what they were glad to leave behind, over drinks and cigarettes (though, technically, they generally discuss the city over DNA results as Greg scurries in and out of her lab). 

Usually that is enough to keep the nostalgia at bay so that it can only emerge in dreams of endless San Francisco beaches and the soothing shrieks of seagulls, but on very rare occasions it is not enough. When just talking about San Francisco is lacking and cannot keep her yearning at arm’s length, each step Wendy takes seems laborious, and she has to almost _shuffle_ into work, each leg feeling like stone and her heart sinking, deep and heavy, in her chest. 

Wendy almost cries on days like these, when she is so wearied that all she wants to do is curl up in a corner of her lab and sleep and dream of San Francisco because even dreams are better than the cold reality that she is here in Las Vegas and no longer home. 

Her misery only vanishes when Greg pokes his head into her lab, takes one look at her, and strolls over to give her a hug, because if there is one thing Greg will never forget about San Francisco, it is that they _always_ started their days with hugs. 

There are many things Wendy misses about San Francisco, but most of all she misses the thick salt air and how it almost burned her throat each time she breathed. She has to admit, however, that the hugs each day were definitely number two on the list of thing she misses the most, and so on those rare days when nostalgia overwhelms her, she discards any restraint she possesses and hugs Greg back. 


End file.
